Bioinformatics Specialists
The responsibilities of the bioinformatics specialists for the Bernard Becker Medical Library include formal assessment of bioinformatics and basic sciences information needs of the library’s users and subsequent development and implementation of plans to meet these needs including instruction, consultation, and creation of web-based information access tools. Additionally, they liaison with the various biomedical research programs, centers, and departments with continual assessment of their information needs, implementing new programs and services as appropriate. As part of the Translational Research Support team, the bioinformatics specialists help graduate students and research faculty use bibliographic, full-text, sequence and numeric databases to solve information problems and maximize their research productivity.
Lili Wang, M.D., M.S.
Lili Wang began her career as a medical doctor in China. After moving to the United States, she did graduate-level work in genetics and biostatistics at the University of Alabama, where she worked extensively with the NCBI databases. Dr. Wang has a Doctorate of Medicine from Beijing Medical University and an M.S. in Biostatistics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Dr. Wang attended the NCBI course “Introduction to Molecular Biology Information Resources” in 2003. The course included: BLAST, Structure, Genomes and Maps. She was awarded the Medical Informatics fellowship by the National Library of Medicine to study at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in June 2005. Dr. Wang has taught a number of bioinformatics courses for Becker Medical Library such as Sequence Similarity Searching, Genetic Variation, Human Genome Resources and the microarray analysis software, Spotfire, since her arrival in 2002. Additionally, Dr. Wang’s work at Becker Medical Library was highlighted in a recent article, “Vignettes: diverse library staff offering diverse bioinformatics services.”*
*J Med Libr Assoc. 2006 July; 94(3): 306, E188-E191.
Publications:
Osterbur DL, Alpi K, Canevari C, Corley PM, Devare M, Gaedeke N, Jacobs DK, Kirlew P, Ohles JA, Vaughan KT, Wang L, Wu Y, Geer RC. Vignettes: Diverse library staff offering diverse bioinformatics services. J Med Libr Assoc. 2006 Jul; 94(3):306, E188-91. PMID: 16888664
Wang L, Lipsey K, Murray C, Prendergast N, Schoening P. The Bioinformatics Program at Washington University’s Bernard Becker Medical Library: Making it Happen. Med Ref Serv Q. 2007; 26 (2):87-98. PMID: 17522011
Kristi Holmes, Ph.D.
Kristi Holmes received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and joined the Washington University’s Becker Medical Library, where she is involved in the development and implementation of the Library’s Bioinformatics@Becker program. This program includes the development and presentation of bioinformatics resource workshops for the university community, integration of molecular biology information resources into medical school and graduate-level curricula, and application of bioinformatics resources to research problems through individualized consultations and collaborative relationships. She has also served as a course developer and instructor for the NCBI Advanced Workshop for Bioinformatics Information Specialists offered by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Dr. Holmes works in close partnership with various groups on campus to develop and support cross-disciplinary initiatives which aim to facilitate campus-wide educational and professional development goals. Dr. Holmes’s professional interests center upon promotion and support of collaborative tools and initiatives at the institutional level and beyond and she actively seeks innovative approaches to promote collaboration in the translational research setting.
Publications:
Holmes, KL and Culver, GM. Analysis of conformational changes in 16S rRNA during the course of 30S subunit assembly. J. Mol. Biol. 2005 Nov 25; 354(2):340-57.
Holmes, KL and Culver, GM. Mapping structural differences between 30S ribosomal subunit assembly intermediates. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2004 Feb; 11(2):179-86.
Mosher, MD, Holmes, KL, and Frost, KS. Structure-Activity Relationships for the 9-(Pyridin-2’-yl)-aminoacridines. Molecules (Special Issue: Biologically Relevant Heterocyclic Compounds) 2004, 2, 102-108.